Girlfriends (1978 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Its nebulous ending is not much of a flaw. Claudia Weill‘s Girlfriends (1978) is still a pretty good film about a young Jewish woman (Melanie Mayron) who loses her live-in friendship with BFF Anne (Anita Skinner) when the latter moves out to get married. The arrangement worked, but for Susan, the Jewish girl, very little after that works very well, including a foolish dalliance with a married rabbi. On her own, Susan painstakingly searches: for herself no less than for an actual job that will relieve her poverty.
Weill directed and Vicki Polon wrote this trenchant, fundamentally comic (and low-budget) picture. At 88 minutes long it is soundly interesting with a mild edginess. Memorably does Mayron play the charming and errant Susan. Girlfriends is enjoyable, despite some visually ugly nudity. “Sarna at the Well” (an artistic 1939 photograph by Gotthard Schuh) it ain’t.*
*Susan, by the way, is a budding photographer.
*I have yet to see “Sarna at the Well” on the Internet. It is displayed in the book, Nude Photography by Peter-Cornell Richter.
